Romancing The Stone

It's Shake'n'Bake time! Chuck had us pick 2 from a list he had on this week's Flash Fiction email. And I chose BDSM erotica and Revenge Thriller... yeah, I chucked in a little vampire fun for a kick too.

enjoy.


“Are you sure you can’t see anything?” he asked.

“Yeah. Where am I?” the lace of the blindfold tickled my cheeks as I spoke.

“The playroom.” He said.

Twisting my hands, I squirmed in my seat, “Oh goodie. We’re gonna have some fun.” His footsteps padded away from the chair as he turned on the video camera – something he had never done before; and I was never comfortable with, something he knew I hated, “Watcha doin’ there Skipper?”

“Oooh, nothin’ just having a bit of fun.” He lied.

Smelling the air, I knew from his sweat that he was lying but I didn’t want to let on about that, “Okay.”

Bradley and I met at a swingles party. These are parties where you were single and just mingled with other singles, took part in all kinds of sexual games and orgies.

As a vampire, I find what Humans do interesting to the highest degree. They fascinate me to no end in how they want to reach that sexual high and wish to stay there – but there’s nothin’ like being a creature like me.

The smell of blood to a Human isn’t as delicious as it is to a vampire. It smells coppery and awful and makes your mouth water – and you don’t know why. It instils fear and loathing in you and all you wish to do is run when you get a noseful of it.

That’s normal for a Human – don’t worry.

But for a vampire? Well, that’s the dinner bell ringing loud and clear for us. And when I met Bradley, he thought he had romanced me off my feet by being charming and lovely and brilliant – however in truth, I had picked up on a scent I hadn’t come across in a very long time.

Yes, I came across an Immortal.

These guys aren’t vampires – they are like the fabled ‘Highlanders’ you see in that movie and television show. They live for centuries and have to die off every fifty years or so. And Bradley had been around for a very long time – over three centuries in fact – and he had been a part of Van Helsing’s first army way back when I was born into this dark life.

This was a thing which my dear, sweet Bradley didn’t know about me – well I don’t think he did – and we played all kinds of games, like the one we’re playing now. And we rather enjoy playing these games; as he thinks he’s got the upper hand.

I tied the blindfold on and looked into her face, waving my hand, “Are you sure you can’t see anything?”

“Yeah. Where am I?”

“The playroom” I grinned walking to the video camera and pressing the record button. The screen lit up and showed her tied to the chair in the sexy leather dominatrix outfit I had ordered online for her. She had loved it. It suited her.

She squirmed in her seat, “Oh goodie. We’re gonna have some fun.”

Michelle is her name and she is a Medical Examiner – well in this life – and she gets away with looking like she belongs in a cemetery. Her darkened eyes and ash curls match her athletic body – all of which I fell for.

But with vamps, that’s how they look to reel you in – they look sexy, hot and are everything you ever want in a person.

And she hunted in the usual haunts a blood-hunter would go: places where Humans felt the most comfortable, and where I met her at a swingles bar. What I don’t think she knew was that I’m an Immortal; a person who genetically can exist for centuries without dying. My parents were normal, Humans who gave birth to an Immortal by pure chance – but I was told it foretold by a witch in our clan in Scotland. But that clan, our family, that area of Scotland is long gone and I’m one of the last ones left.

I don’t think Michelle knows about who I am. But I know who the hell she is; and this video will be sent straight to Van Helsing himself in Germany where he’s on his deathbed – as she is the last of her family in existence; and he would be pleased to witness her death.

My phone vibrated. A message coming in, and I checked it: ‘Signal coming in clear. Proceed, my son.’

“Bradley, are you there?” I asked, knowing full well he was planning my death and I was on show for somebody he was trying to impress.

“Yes my love.” His voice was closer to me as he moved my hair over my shoulder, “Fun is what you wish, fun is what we’ll have.”

“Wonderful.”

The signal came through skype nice and clear as Van Helsing laid in his bed connected up to life support, a tank of oxygen next to him as he held the mask to his face.

His life was at an end – at long last – and he was watching the revenge he’d been staying alive for. He wasn’t an Immortal, not like his son Bradley, but he did have some of Dracula’s blood coursing through his veins for the longest time; for the past three and half centuries. And in the past year, he had to have a blood transfusion, and his long, long life started to come to an end.

Yes, he started to feel his age in so many ways. His joints ached and hurt, as his mind aged swifter than he cared to admit. Before his very eyes, he witnessed himself aging over the past five years, becoming the withering waif of a Human the doctors had turned him back into.

He almost hated those doctors – but when he thought about it, he had lived longer than his three wives, five daughters, four sons, forty-five grand-children, twenty-five great-grandchildren and fifteen grandchildren. His line was still going on with Bradley in the lead; with his wife and their little brood of a family under the protection of the Van Helsing Agency.

And Bradley was the most blood-thirsty of his children who had turned into a Vampire Hunter – he hadn’t seen such violence in a person since he was a young man; since he spotted his hatred for that vampire which destroyed his family. He coughed, wheezing at the sheer memory of how Dracula had massacred his whole village, “Damned bastard...”

“Shush now, sir. Let’s enjoy your work after so long in waiting.” His man wiped his forehead with a cool cloth, then took the mask away for moment and dabbed up a spot of blood he had coughed up, “Shall I join you, or do you wish this to be a private moment?”

His tired eyes looked over at Jeeves (he had never known the man’s real name as he’d gone through so many servants in his time), “No, no, stay please, enjoy it as much as I will.”

Bradley came to in the chair with the blindfold on. The lace of it tickled his cheek and, as he struggled, he knew he was wearing the leather outfit she had been wearing.

“Hi lover.” her voice was nearby, “Comfy?”

“Am I wearing the leather ... um.. thing you were?”

“Yes. Actually, while you were out, I changed you into the one I was wearing. We’re not the same size, but leather stretches.” he could hear a smile in her voice, “I’ve been going through your phone and there’s some interesting intell on here... from New Orleans, Germany, London, New York City – all from the same person: you call him Father.”

“Oh crap.” He mumbled, “Listen, Michelle, I’m not what you think.”

“You are exactly what I think. You’re an immortal. I could smell it on you and your family destroyed mine centuries ago.” I snapped, “So, you tracked down the last of my family and thought it would go down well to seal the deal while your Daddy-dearest is laying on his death bed in Düsseldorf? He is watching this through Skype; and your phone has been going crazy since I overpowered you and tied you up.”

His voice shook and broke: “Please, I have nothing to lose, and I love you.”

I shook her head as I stood there nude next to the camera, “You see, you don’t. You put Van Helsing before me; and that’s just wrong. And what’s worse is that you don’t love me because you’re married with a little brood of kiddlie-winks yourself. So, once I kill you – and make it look like something weird gone wrong for the police to find – I’ll track down your family and kill them too.”

Bradley’s phone rang and I put it on speaker as his old voice came across the line sounding like crackling paper: “Michelle, please don’t harm him. He is my first son, and my only link to...”

“No, he’s my last meal before I kill off your entire line.” I said, “And you came after me. All I was doing was minding my own business. I had a job, I scored blood the right way and I wasn’t killing anyone. So, what the fuck, man?”

A laugh crackled across the phone line: “You see, my dear Michelle, you are too late. The police are storming the building as we speak and my son will be saved; and you will be killed on sight.”

I threw the phone to floor. The camera shattered against the nearest wall and the computer smashed into a million pieces onto the floor. Faster than Bradley could keep up with me, I sped around the room, found the secret entrance out to our bedroom, dressed, packed, and went back to him.

He was still sitting there.

I could hear the police pounding on the front door.

Approaching from behind him, I attacked. I drank. I made sure there was nothing left in him but bone marrow.

By the time the police smashed their way in, I was long gone. How? They’d never know.

Three days later, I was standing outside the house of Bradley’s wife three hundred miles away. My hair was red, I had blue contacts in and dressed in a 1960’s housewife’s dress I found at a thrift store.

I looked totally different to how I did in New Jersey.

Pulling out my phone, I found the advertisement for a live-in nanny for the Van Helsing family. Smiling, I walked up to the humble-looking house and rang the bell.

A young blonde teenaged boy answered with Bradley’s eyes and build, “Can I help you?” jeez, he sounded like his Dad.

“Yes.” I smiled, “I’m here about the advert for a nanny.”

He turned from me for a moment: “Mom!” then turned back, “Please come in.”

“Thank you.” I walked in and looked around. I could get used to this kinda life. Once I was shown to my quarters, I pulled out my phone, called a number, "Jeeves, I'm in."

Jeeves looked down at Van Helsing as he pocketed the syringe, and picked up the phone from next to the bed, "Okay, Michelle. I'm done on my end too."